This is a natural progression of the Factory Method (Design Pattern) but applies the Strategy (Design Pattern).
Benefits:
- Allows polymorphic creation of objects
- Nicely encapsulates object creation – client depends on abstraction not implementation
- Groups creation logic for multiple inter-dependent classes
- Change one line of code to replace a set of classes or even switch dynamically at runtime
Disadvantages:
- Slightly more indirect code
- Only covers creation